Railroading
by speck2993
Summary: Taylor is born into the wrong world. This won't do at all.
1. Prologue

To put it lightly, Taylor Hebert was not doing well.

It was probably the sleep, she knew. She remembered reading something about how sleep deprivation leads to hormonal balance, particularly in teens, so kids who were starved for rest ended up lazy and depressed. If she could just fix her sleep schedule, get to bed at eleven and wake up at seven every day, that might fix everything - all the evidence pointed in that direction, at least.

But wasn't that a little bit backwards? Maybe the reason she wasn't getting any sleep was because she felt like shit, not the other way around. People sleep to avoid feeling tired, but she just felt tired all the time, even after sleeping. So maybe sleep deprivation was a symptom, not a cause, and there was some other problem? What then? How could she solve the problem if she didn't know what it was?

Come to think of it, she didn't know that there was a problem at all. She couldn't remember ever having felt better. Maybe life had always been shit and she was just mature enough now to come to terms with it. Maybe every adult felt like this, all the time, and it was just the sort of thing that she had to learn to live with. Or worse, maybe nobody else felt like this, and she was just defective somehow. Sad, slow, emotionally dry.

Maybe she was just color-blind. The world looked, the world felt, so gray to her. It wasn't _bad_ , it wasn't hurting her, it was just boring and blank and so very heavy.

Maybe part of the problem was that Taylor had been holed up in her room for several hours. For the second time this week, it seemed, she had accidentally pulled an all-nighter.

She hadn't been _doing_ anything, really. Just jumping around on the internet, trying to find something interesting enough to engage her for another hour, to distract her from herself.

And that was another problem, wasn't it? She didn't feel happy anymore. She didn't really feel sad anymore, either. She just . . . walked around, ate food and occasionally slept. Just existing. Not even that, really. Just persisting. Like she had spent her whole life practicing the same routine, and now it was so automatic that she did it on autopilot, except that the routine was her entire life, and she lived it all from the passenger seat.

Click, click. It was 6 o'clock in the morning. She would have to leave for school in another hour or two. Click, click. Her stomach growled. Hungry. But she didn't want to move. Click, click. She would grab a bowl of cereal or something before she had to leave. Click, click. She wouldn't, really, she would hold off on getting out of bed until it was too late for her to get a proper breakfast. Click, click. She didn't really care.

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Huh. Taylor wasn't entirely sure how she had ended up here, actually. The URL read "parahumans . net," but she didn't remember clicking a link with that caption, but she hadn't exactly been paying attention to what she did, so she was sure that she had just forgotten.

The fact that her short-term memory had deteriorated to the point that she couldn't remember what she did ten seconds ago was troubling, but on the bright side, it wouldn't be something to worry about for much longer. In the last few months, Taylor had found that a lot of problems tend to go away if you ignore them. Some problems get replaced with bigger problems, like the problem of doing homework turning into the problem of having bad grades, but plenty of things just went away for good if she spent long enough refusing to acknowledge them.

Ignoring her problems left her with a lot more time to . . . well, mostly to sit still and feel guilty about not dealing with her problems, which was a bit of a problem. She had so much free time. She would probably be best served spending some of that time to fix her severely fucked-up sleep schedule. Well, better late than never . . .

Taylor's eyes blinked open as her head fell on her pillow. She couldn't fall asleep now, there was no time. She would sleep for at least three hours, wake up too late to catch the bus, and miss school entirely.

Would that be so bad? It wasn't like she did much in school. Kids missed all the time when they were sick. They ended up just fine. Wouldn't it be fine if she just stayed home all day? A mental health break or something. Just to clear her head. Just to catch up on sleep. Just for a day, that's all.

It would spiral out of control, she was sure. She would justify missing more days, more and more until it actually did cause a problem. It wouldn't be anything new - it was pretty similar to the process by which she had stopped doing homework, actually. It had started with just missing an assignment here and there, not enough to hurt her grades, and then out of fucking nowhere she reached the point where she couldn't make up enough assignments to _fix_ her grade, so there was no reason to even try at that point. She wasn't a total delinquent, at least not yet, but she knew that it was just a matter of time. And even knowing that sped the process considerably: she knew that she would stop doing assignments completely pretty soon, not even bothering to do the easy, 5-minute-type stuff, so what was the point of delaying the inevitable? A self-fulfilling prophecy, sure, but the point of prophecies is that they're true.

So if she skipped school tomorrow, she would do it more in the future. Taylor shut her laptop and pushed it under her pillow.

She didn't really care.

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Light through the window. Birds chirping outside. Absolute silence.

Morning.

A text. "U ok?" Emma. Lying bitch. She didn't really care, just wanted to maintain appearances for her mom. Fuck her, hated her.

8:15. Shit. School had started fifteen minutes ago. Emma must have noticed that she wasn't in class.

It took Taylor another quarter of an hour to muster the energy to get out of bed - she almost expected that she would ignore her phone's alarm and sleep in until ten. Miraculously, though, she swung her legs over the edge of her bed and made her way to the stairs, dragging a thick blanket behind her.

"Oh! Honey, I thought you were at school already. Do you need me to drive you?"

Fucking Mom. How could she be so fucking _happy_ in the morning? Not angry at Taylor for having missed school, not working on her own problems, just so fucking chipper, ready to fix all of the world's fucking problems, just wave her hand and _poof_ them away.

"No. I was feeling sick all last night, probably best if I rest it off and go back tomorrow." Just don't ask questions, don't try to fucking _fix_ everything, not everything has an answer some things are just fucking bad and you _can't fix them . . ._

"You know your body best. Do you want to go in to the doctor, or - "

"No. I'll be fine." Taylor cut her mother off abruptly, and immediately wondered whether she was being too sharp. If Mom thought she was angry, it would be a whole thing and that _wasn't_ the sort of problem she could just ignore, as she knew from experience. "I think it's just a temporary thing," she explained.

"Okay. I'd love to stay and help but I'm afraid that I'm off to work. Love you!" Mom had just finished packing herself a lunch, and was almost out the door before Taylor could mutter a hasty "you too" in her general direction. Again, damage control.

Growl. Hungry. Food.

Chewing was hard. Taylor was too tired to chew.

She turned around, slumped onto the handrail, and made her way down the half of the flight that she had already traversed. Another wasted miracle.

She didn't want to sleep, she couldn't sleep. She wasn't the sort of tired that sleep could cure. She could lie down and tangle herself up in her sheets and lose track of time, but she wouldn't fall asleep. What she really needed was a distraction, some way to get the clock to go faster without worrying about anything else.

She typed a password into her laptop, practiced fingers flying across the fingers even as her wrists slumped on the machine's body.

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The blurb went on, but, honestly, Taylor didn't even get through the first sentence. What the fuck was "cape"? Maybe she was pronouncing it wrong. Maybe it was like "kah-pay" or something. Like some sort of martial art.

It made . . . well, it didn't make sense, but it made _more_ sense to Taylor as she read through the site. It was a game? Or maybe a cult? Definitely seemed like more of a game than a cult, though the distinction wasn't entirely clear. It could be both, really.

It was like Dungeons and Dragons. Taylor had never played Dungeons and Dragons, but it was the best comparison she could make nonetheless - a whole bunch of people pretending to live in some sort of fantasy world, except instead of a classic fantasy setting it was more like a superhero story. There were consistent, worldwide stories - the story seemed to exist on several different power levels, so there were villains that mugged old ladies and villains that ate cities. Within specific areas, the same "capes" kept popping up over and over again, so it seemed like the story was different in different geographical areas. When the really big villains did things, though, all of the capes who could be bothered would get together, from all over the world, which seemed like an effective way of making sure that the story was coherent across all of the different geographical areas.

It was a huge undertaking - a banner at the top of the page boasted that there were "over 8 million users currently online," which obviously couldn't be correct. Could it? That was, like a tenth of a percent of the world's population, way too big. If it were that big, Taylor would have heard about it by now.

Right?

But people did weird things. She knew that people did all sorts of weird things, most of which she knew nothing about. This looked like a global thing - there were message boards for places outside of the US, apparently in different languages. Taylor recognized some Spanish, something that looked like German, even an Asian-looking script. Japanese, maybe?

Still, 8 million users online at ten o'clock in the morning EST on a Tuesday seemed _off_ somehow.

So the number could just be made up. Still, the message boards seemed fairly active. There was a lot of posting happening on in the boards for most major cities, and it seemed complicated enough that a bot couldn't come up with it all. Technology wasn't that good, at least not yet. No robot could simulation conversation this well.

So it seemed like there really were a lot of users. Maybe the figure at the top of the page was meant to increase immersion or something. Some of the users probably _were_ bots, just making sure that discussion didn't ever go dead, but there had to be real people somewhere behind the whole thing.

It was pretty cool, actually, in a really geeky sort of way. People would just come up with information out of nowhere, and the rest of the community would decide whether or not that helped the story, and if it did then they would roll with it like it was established knowledge. It seemed like anybody was allowed to add to the history of the world, as long as everybody else agreed.

Taylor was disappointed to learn that there was no board for Providence. Most of the major East Coast cities were represented: New York, Boston, and Philadelphia were all quite active, as were cities like Baltimore and Brockton Bay . . .

A quick Google search confirmed that Brockton Bay did _not_ , in fact, exist, and a new bout of research shed some light on that curiosity: part of the story, it seemed, was that Providence, Pawtucket, and Cranston had been replaced in the early colonial period by a somewhat different settlement, which, while not entirely justified, at least made sense. Looking around the rest of the site, Taylor found several other cities that seemed similarly manufactured for the sake of the story: Salem, OR, for example, was clearly just an excuse for somebody to write a witch-themed cape into the mythos, although that character didn't seem to have really gone anywhere.

The site was also quite nuanced, which surprised her. There was an entire section for "fan creations," full of fan-made drawings ( _good_ drawings,) people dressed up in costume, cape-based card games and more. An anonymized "connections" board, posts by characters who had been rescued by capes and wanted to get back in touch. Taylor didn't understand the appeal of it at first, but after looking at it for a while, noting how a certain subset of young female characters kept trying to get in touch with the same few capes, she began to appreciate how it fit within the game's world, how it functioned as a part of the total immersive experience.

Growl. Two-thirty. Holy shit.

Taylor hadn't realized until it had sucked her in just how _big_ this game was. Each little thing she examined fit coherently into the whole, and there were so very _many_ rabbit holes to explore. A project like this had to have a dedicated community of considerable size supporting it - each individual city was represented by dozens, hundreds, thousands of regular users, each with their own specific tendencies. There were even accounts for the capes _within the story_ , operated by god-knows-who, that would confirm or deny (or refuse to either confirm or deny) various reports about themselves. After four and a half hours of research, Taylor still felt like an outsider to the whole system.

Unfortunately, after four and a half hours of research, she was also unbearably hungry. Taylor hadn't figured out for certain whether hunger was one of the problems that would go away, but she thought that it probably wasn't.

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Taylor had made a sandwich. Well, two pieces of Wonder Bread with peanut butter smeared in between them. It tasted fine. It had all those nutrients that bodies need. Some calories, some carbohydrates, some . . . Vitamin A? Maybe? Did people actually need Vitamin A?

Whatever. It was fine. A little bit too chewy and clumpy, so that sometimes when she swallowed parts of it stuck together and didn't fit down her throat and she couldn't breathe. That happened twice.

It wasn't that she didn't know how to chew food, she was just distracted. Distracted by the laptop cradled in the crock of her left arm while her right half was slowly assembling another peanut-butter bread thing. Not a whole sandwich, just a piece of bread with peanut butter folded over on top of itself. Like a taco or something.

She was reading the "Behemoth attacks Singapore" megathread. Behemoth was one of the biggest, baddest villains - he was one of the Endbringers, which were massive monster-ish things of unknown origins that sometimes destroyed Japan. Well, one of them destroyed Japan. Not this one - this one hadn't broken any countries. Yet.

It (or "he" - its gender status wasn't clear, which seemed pretty intentional) was a dynakinetic - it could absorb huge amounts of energy and redirect them however it wanted. It wasn't fast like the other ones, but it could cause high-magnitude earthquakes at will and was basically impenetrable, which tended to cause a lot of problems for every squishy hero who couldn't fly. The ones who could fly had to look out for the lightning that he threw, and the ones who could take earthquakes had to deal with the fact that almost anybody who got within thirty feet of him was instantly pulverized and turned to ash, excepting only super-durable capes like Alexandria.

Singapore had been alerted relatively early - Taylor wasn't sure how that had been decided, but the alarm had been sounded early, which meant that basically everybody had been evacuated before Behemoth had arrived. That meant that a lot of Singaporean accounts were posting live about the things that were "happening" to them, the tremors they could feel even from miles away and the loud cracks of thunder on a sunny day.

Taylor kept chomping on her sandwich, completely captivated by the megathread.

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 **A/N: I meant to do more work on Not in Kansas, but some stuff went down and I haven't been in the right headspace to write crack for a while. I've been in the right headspace to write this, though - I saw the idea somewhere a while ago and it turned around in my head until this came out. I have a pretty complete outline and I've been sticking to a good writing schedule over the last few weeks, so I should be able to update at least semi-regularly.**


	2. Genesis

Her head craned downward, Taylor leaned heavily on the handrail, almost pivoting her way down the steps of the bus onto the pavement below. She took the half-hop between the bottom step and the curb badly, landing in an awkward position and ignoring the slight twinge in her ankle.

She made her way into the school, distracted, only narrowly avoiding collision with several objects. She was able to reach her first class without looking up, scaling two staircases and navigating several labyrinthine hallways by memory.

The morning bell rang at 8:00 precisely - Taylor sighed, then powered off her phone and shoved it under her leg, trapping it between herself and the seat.

She felt it underneath her for the entire class period. Felt the way that the case pressed unevenly against her pants. Felt it cooling down, felt its heat radiating into the chair, into the air, into her.

The lecture was on the second derivative test or something. Taylor didn't quite get it all.

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Lunchtime came after a quick eternity. History. Blech. She had better things to do than learn about boring shit that might as well not have happened.

She had spent the bus ride reading up on Brockton Bay, on the Parahumans Online Wiki. It didn't tell her where Brockton Bay had actually come from, or why it had replaced Providence, but at least she would be able to get up to speed on the "current" state of the city. It seemed that Brockton Bay, more than most cities, had a gang problem. In particular, there were three major gangs that consistently gave residents trouble. Taylor hadn't figured out the specifics of the relationship between the gangs, but the general picture was easy enough to grasp: the Merchants were a gang mostly of drug-addicts, the weakest of the three in both material assets and cape power, but they occupied mostly-abandoned turf, so nobody wanted to waste resources cleaning them out. The ABB had comparatively few capes, but they occupied a lot of valuable space, and their leader, Lung, was the strongest individual fighter in the city, so they were able to maintain their holdings through him. The largest gang by most measures was the Empire Eighty-Eight, a group of Neo-Nazis who, predictably, engaged in regular feuds with the ABB.

Taylor continued to read as she made her way to the cafeteria. She found herself in the rather strange position of being aware of the people around her without paying any attention to them at all - she knew where they were, at least, or she wouldn't have been able to navigate her way around them while staring at her phone; on the other hand, if asked, she knew that she wouldn't be able to identify a single one of her fellow walkers. The Pope could walk right by and she wouldn't notice.

Actually, come to think of it, she didn't really know what the Pope looked like, so that wasn't a great example. The President, perhaps. Rihanna. Jesus Christ.

"Hey, Taylor! Missed you yesterday!"

Jesus Christ.

It was Emma, unmistakably. Taylor had been hearing that voice since early childhood, and as far as she was concerned it had never changed.

 _Something_ had changed, though, because Emma's voice had transformed from something light and airy into a piercing treble, one which stirred up in Taylor a profound aggravation.

Rationally, she thought that Emma was trying to be nice. Taylor wondered, though, if Emma had ever learned how to be nice in the first place. She hadn't noticed it until recently, but looking back, it seemed that it had always been there - Emma was self-deprecating to a fault, which was pretty easy for her, considering that she had so few others. Neither Emma nor Taylor had ever pointed it out, but it was clear that Emma was the prettier of the two - Taylor could feel it, could feel the way that guys leaned into Emma in a way that Taylor had never experienced for herself. When they were younger, Emma had always complimented Taylor's hair, but in hindsight the compliments felt shallow. Emma had always given compliments from a position of strength - every compliment was a consolation prize, and, conversely, everything she said about herself was absolutely _crushing_ to the rest of the world.

As far as Taylor was concerned, Emma was unbearably perfect - talking to her was like the strongest form of criticism, dispensed by somebody who didn't even mean to do it.

That was the real problem with Emma, Taylor decided. She wasn't aware of just how _lucky_ she was to be born with what she had. If she knew, then at least it would be fair to criticize her for being so blatant about it, but she was so perfectly oblivious to herself that even that seemed unfair.

Taylor suddenly remembered that she had been addressed.

"Hey, Emma. Felt a little sick yesterday."

"Oh, that's too bad! I grabbed homework from your teachers so you won't get behind." Taylor looked down to see a grip of papers, no more than five sheets, in Emma's outstretched hand.

 _Fucking_ hell, she couldn't even mind her own business. She just had to make things better for everybody else, couldn't stand the thought of Taylor acting independently. It was infantilizing - Emma didn't believe that Taylor could handle herself for even the most basic tasks.

Somewhere, a small part of Taylor knew that if it weren't for Emma, she wouldn't have tried to learn about the work that she had missed. What would be the point, considering that she wouldn't do it anyway?

Taylor ignored that part. She was good at ignoring that part.

Emma kept trying to establish a conversation, and Taylor kept deftly avoiding one. She couldn't remember the last time she had opened up to Emma. She had been lying to her for a while - lying about doing her homework, lying about being on track, lying about wanting to talk in the first place. Lies lies lies.

Eventually Emma picked up on the fact that Taylor wasn't up to talk and went to find some other friend. _Oblivious bitch_.

Taylor caught herself - she wasn't sure where that had come from. She really didn't hate Emma, or at least, she didn't think that Emma deserved to be hated. Sure, she was blind as a bat when it came to reality, and pretty insufferable when it came to any sort of interpersonal interaction, and she didn't even care about Taylor in the first place, they had just happened to meet because their moms had worked together forever ago, and the only reason Emma kept trying to maintain the friendship was so that her mom wouldn't think that anything was wrong . . .

Taylor took a deep breath, putting all those issues aside. It wasn't fair to focus on everything that was wrong with Emma, even if it was all she could see anymore. If somebody were to focus on everything that was wrong with her, then they would definitely come away with a negative image of her, although that wasn't entirely undeserved.

She had to put aside that line of thought as well. Self-loathing was a distraction.

The point was that Emma wasn't evil the same way that, say, Hitler was evil. She didn't do it on purpose.

There were other differences, but that seemed like the big one, at least in an abstract sense.

In some ways, it would be convenient if Emma were just a bitch to everybody all day all week all year. At least then, Taylor's disgust would be justified. As things stood, Taylor loathed Emma more than words could say, which reflected negatively on Taylor much more than it did on Emma.

She grabbed her homework from the table on which Emma had left it, hastily stuffing it into her backpack. She could plausibly retrieve it later - she would have to dig a bit through the rolling sea of loose papers, but it wouldn't be impossible. At home, where she could afford to spread out a bit, it would take less than five minutes of riffling through old assignments before she found them again.

Come to think of it, she really had to clean out her backpack. There was stuff in there from last year, for God's sake. There were maybe a hundred loose sheets of paper in there, some crumpled up and molded to the bottom of the bag, some neatly stacked in an apparently random order. With a good half-hour of work she could sort it out completely. Recycle everything she didn't need, get the remainder in order and really get back on track in terms of completing assignments.

She had time. She could do it right when she got home. It wouldn't be difficult.

Shame that she wouldn't follow through with it.

Her homework safely stowed away and left to rot, she reached into her backpack's front pocket and retrieved a slightly smushed sandwich wrapped in cellophane. It took her a few seconds to find where the plastic stuff was stuck to itself so that she could peel it back, which was kind of annoying. Once she had removed it from the sandwich, she compressed the plastic wrap into a ball with her fist and threw it at a gentle arc towards the nearest trash can.

She missed by a couple of inches, prompting her to walk to the can, grab her trash from the floor, and drop it in properly.

Ten minutes later Taylor found herself holed up in a stairwell, scrolling through the Brockton Bay boards on Parahumans Online.

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️ **Topic: Surprise Assembly at Arcadia - Wards Action?**

 **In: Boards ► Places ► America ► Brockton Bay ► Speculation**

 **HannahAmerica** (Original Poster)

Posted on January 12, 2010:

Hey all,

So I go to Arcadia High, and its not really a secret that a bunch of Wards go here as well. So today in the middle of the day they announced a school-wide assembly and gathered everybody in the auditorium. The really weird thing is that nobody knew that there was an assembly, so Im thinking maybe it was a coverup for some sort of Wards mission that they didn't want to publicize? Idk it just seems weird to me.

 **(Showing page 1 of 1)**

► **Robby**

Replied on January 12, 2010:

Probably not the best thing to speculate about - I don't know if this falls outside the rules about speculation on cape identities, but it seems to be skirting the line at the very least.

► **HannahAmerica** (Original Poster)

Replied on January 12, 2010:

OMG I totally didn't think of that! I didn't mean to speculate about who the Wards are or anything I just thought that it was weird and might be cape related.

► **Alathea** (Moderator: Brockton Bay)

Replied on January 12, 2010:

Yeah, gonna go ahead and lock this. I won't give an infraction because I don't think that the post itself breaks any rules, but I don't see how this discussion could go anywhere without speculation that would itself be rule-breaking, so there's no reason to leave the bomb ticking.

 **End of page.** **1** **.**

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Well, that was certainly a weird interaction. Had the original poster been taking too much liberty with the story? If so, it was weird that the moderator had woven it into the tapestry rather than deleting the thread entirely. Taylor wasn't sure what sort of power the moderating team had over the events as portrayed - they didn't seem to be omnipotent, but beyond that, it wasn't clear what sort of discussion that would shut down and what they would allow. The canonical timeline seemed to be built arbitrarily.

Scrolling to the top of the page, Taylor saw the numeral (1) next to a notification bell, indicating . . . something. She was logged into the site, but she hadn't interacted with any content, so she wasn't sure what sort of information would be connected to her account.

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️ **Private Message from TheWingedOne** (moderator)

 **TheWingedOne:** Hello, and welcome to Parahumans Online! This is a pretty sprawling project, and we know that it can be a bit intimidating for new members, so we on the mod team try to make contact with all of our new users just to provide an explanation of what's going on.

Parahumans Online is a roleplay project set in Earth Bet, an Earth-proper spinoff whose defining characteristic is its superpowers. I can provide a more detailed history if you'd like - the short of it is that in the early 1980s, people started spontaneously developing superpowers in moments of extreme stress. We call these individuals parahumans, or capes, and although some of them find a living in the private sector, a vast majority end up in superhero or supervillain roles, just as the comic books predicted.

On Earth Bet, Parahumans Online was developed as a way to centralize cape discussion on the internet. Its userbase is comprised almost entirely of non-powered individuals with a passion for cape affairs, although we do have a few cape accounts that interact with people directly and reveal the more intricate points in the storyline.

What this means for you, the reader, is that you're essentially playing a regular person on Earth Bet, reacting to the news as you see it. In fact, we encourage you to develop a specific persona - conjure up in your mind an image of the type of person who would be interested in cape affairs, and try to inject that personality into your interactions with other users on the site. This may sound strange at first blush, but it really is the easiest way to interact with the site.

The most important and attractive feature of Parahumans Online is the broad yet coherent storyline, which is mostly managed by the moderating team. We try our best to make sure that our users are the ones telling the story - our job, then, is to make sure that they're telling the _correct_ story. We distribute information about major events to our more frequent users so that they can agree on the broad strokes of the story, then we monitor the ensuing news threads to make sure that the specific details are filled in consistently. Occasionally, we have issues with users disagreeing, in which case we have to step in and resolve things, but the beautiful thing about this project is that our users tend to do a great job of cooperating with one another, so that adding more voices contributes to the overall effect, rather than introducing cacophony.

Feel free to ask me if you have any uncertainties about our site. Your account has been assigned to my karass, as it were, so I am in charge of making sure that you can find a place within our community.

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Taylor had plenty of questions, but it was time for chemistry. Actually, if she remembered correctly, there was a test today. She hadn't studied, but it was on related rates, which wasn't even a real chemistry concept, so she would probably be fine. The calm before the storm, as it were.

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It was eight fifteen, somehow.

Taylor was sure that it hadn't been eight o'clock fifteen minutes ago. It had been just after noon. She had been taking a chemistry test, balancing equations and doing some math. She remembered it vividly, and it hadn't been all that long ago.

But here she was, lying across the couch, waiting for the sun to go down, so it really was eight fifteen.

She tossed her feet off of the top of the couch and onto the ground, a kind of rotational motion that accomplished a lot of motion without much work. Pushing herself up off of the couch, Taylor meandered her way to the refrigerator with the intent of retrieving a frozen chimichanga.

Once she had reached the refrigerator, Taylor realized that the chimichangas were actually in the freezer in the garage. Unfortunately, she actually needed to eat, so it seemed like her trek was not yet completed.

It was cold in the garage and Taylor wasn't wearing any shoes. She was wearing socks, but they were thin nylon socks, not really effective against the chilled cement. She tiptoed her way to the freezer, keeping the area of contact between her foot and the floor as small as possible, then stepping her way onto an abandoned mat once she reached the freezer. She didn't know what the mat was for - it had certainly never been used in the house - but for now, it was doing a serviceable job of keeping her poor innocent toes away from the mean concrete, so she was grateful for it.

Taylor heard the garage door opening behind her and felt a sudden urge to run. She seized a chimichanga from the box in which they were kept, slammed the freezer door shut and scampered back inside, closing the door behind her. From there, she grabbed her blanket from off of the couch and deftly made her way down the stairs, staying low to the ground while traversing three or four stairs per step. She heard a door open behind her just as she turned the corner toward her room.

She wasn't sure _why_ , but she really didn't want to see her mother, and the opening of the garage door had triggered a sort of fight-or-flight response in her.

Of course, the chimichanga was still cold, so she would have to make her way back upstairs if she wanted to eat it.

That was bad for a whole bunch of reasons, though. She was probably supposed to have eaten dinner by now. She didn't think that Mom would be mad about it, really, but it would certainly be awkward. Besides, she didn't want to go back upstairs while still holding a frozen chimichanga - that would tip Mom off to the fact that she had scurried downstairs without heating the thing up. She could hide it in her blanket, maybe, but she wasn't really an expert in sleight-of-hand, and if she got caught trying to smuggle a chimichanga to the microwave, that would just be the most awkward thing.

The package said "fully cooked and ready to eat."

Taylor shut her door and left the chimichanga out to thaw. Maybe it would be better cold.

 **(¯ˆ·.¸(¯ˆ·.¸(¯ˆ·.¸¸.·ˆ¯)¸.·ˆ¯)¸.·ˆ¯)**

The chimichanga had emphatically _not_ been better cold. The chimichangas were kind of crap even when well-heated, actually. This one had been positively wretched.

Luckily, Taylor had had a rather excellent distraction to keep her mind off of her food. Namely, "TheWingedOne" had provided her with a document detailing a brief history of Earth Bet and survey of Brockton Bay, which filled in a lot of the gaps in her knowledge. It was a monstrously long thing, coming in at just over one hundred pages, but Taylor had knocked the thing out in under two hours with no interruptions. It was incredible, the way that she was able to focus on the text and breeze her way through it - she couldn't remember having felt this way about any text at all in quite a long time.

 **(¯ˆ·.¸(¯ˆ·.¸(¯ˆ·.¸¸.·ˆ¯)¸.·ˆ¯)¸.·ˆ¯)**

 **Perfect_Fit:** Wow, that was really neat to read! It must have taken a lot of effort to put that whole thing together - I appreciate the time you guys put into this.

 **TheWingedOne:** Don't mention it! It's really not a big deal - the moderating team is pretty big and we're all really passionate about the project, so it doesn't even feel like work to us.

 **TheWingedOne:** Actually, come to think of it, we're planning a new Brockton Bay arc and I think you'd be perfect for it. Do you want the details?

 **Perfect_Fit:** I'm not really sure what's going on yet, but I've had a lot of fun so far. I'd love to be a part of something if you think I'd fit in!

 **TheWingedOne:** Great! Don't even worry about your experience level - in some ways, it's actually better if you come to this fresh.

Basically, we're thinking of introducing a new cape. They're probably a girl, sophomore in high school, but the personal details are flexible. The point is that she goes to Winslow, so she's more in-touch with a lot of the people on the ground than most of the Wards are, and she ends up raising a lot of questions about ethical use of superpowers because of that.

I'm pitching this to you because we like to have actual people behind our capes whenever possible, and the vibe I get from you is that you'd fit this role really well. If you think that you can maintain a decent level of activity, I'd love to put you in the driver's seat for this character, let you make the major decisions and really give some life to the character so that they don't feel like a plot contrivance.

Your activity level since you've joined the site has been more than sufficient for this job, so I don't think that you'll have any trouble staying active enough to make this work. If you think that there will be any problems, though, please don't feel pressured to take the character - I would have to ask that you don't mention anything hinting at this conversation until the character actually debuts, but for the most part, you could interact with the site as you normally would. What do you say?

 **Perfect_Fit:** That seems like a pretty big responsibility, but if you can help me get comfortable with it then it sounds like a lot of fun! What do I need to do?

 **TheWingedOne:** The first step isn't all that different from what I recommended in my first message - you should try to conceptualize your character in your mind, make them as real as possible. They don't have to be modelled on you, but it helps if they have some similar experiences; in particular, you want it to be easy to step into your character's headspace at any given moment.

Once you're done thinking about that, I want you to describe your character to me. Give me a name, give me some likes and dislikes, as much personal history as you can come up with. From there, it will be a sort of collaborative process: you'll describe your ideas to me, and I'll work with you to refine those ideas so that they fit into the wider narrative.

It's a very open-ended process, so don't feel like you have to have all the answers right away. For now, try to come up with a rough outline and message me once you feel solid enough to move forward.

 **(¯ˆ·.¸(¯ˆ·.¸(¯ˆ·.¸¸.·ˆ¯)¸.·ˆ¯)¸.·ˆ¯)**

Taylor typed up a message, reread it with agonizing attention to detail, then hastily deleted it.

Creating a character to play turned out to be a really intensive process, because in order to step into somebody else's head, she first had to step out of her own, and that required her to pin herself down for a moment. She tried all sorts of things to create the required separation: she gave her avatar a different name, different hair, different parents, even a different gender, but nothing seemed to work.

The trouble was in creating a version of herself that was discernibly unlike herself. She couldn't figure out how to transport her worldview into another set of experiences. But that meant . . .

Taylor typed out a message in fifteen minutes, not deleting a single word. She pressed send without proofreading it.

This was the sort of thing that her Mom had told her never to do.

 **(¯ˆ·.¸(¯ˆ·.¸(¯ˆ·.¸¸.·ˆ¯)¸.·ˆ¯)¸.·ˆ¯)**

 **Perfect_Fit:** OK, so here's what I've got so far.

Her name is Taylor Hebert. She's fifteen years old, just started her sophomore year at Winslow . . .

 **(¯ˆ·.¸(¯ˆ·.¸(¯ˆ·.¸¸.·ˆ¯)¸.·ˆ¯)¸.·ˆ¯)**

Somewhere far away, across the confines of space and time, in a place where reality had just a little more give to it, the Simurgh unfurled her wings and history began to change.

 **(¯ˆ·.¸(¯ˆ·.¸(¯ˆ·.¸¸.·ˆ¯)¸.·ˆ¯)¸.·ˆ¯)**

 **A/N: Chapter is a bit longer than I intended, but we ended up in the right spot. Criticism is always appreciated!**


	3. Ulisse

**TheWingedOne:** This is a good foundation! It seems like you have a pretty good idea of how your character works internally; I'm not sure what your schedule is for the rest of the evening, but if you've got a couple of hours free, I'd like to do an exercise that should help you to orient the character externally.

Taylor already wanted to take the message back. She had been hearing the same thing since she was _six_ , for Christ's sake. _Don't give out personal info over the Internet, Taylor. Don't make yourself an easy target for stalkers, Taylor_. It had seemed like such an obvious rule, something that she could never possibly be stupid enough to fuck up.

And yet here she was. Despite all her protests, all her insistence that she could never be so dense, she had ended up in this fucking mess.

The closest thing to a silver lining was that "TheWingedOne" didn't know that the information she had given was real. Taylor was pretty sure that she didn't have any results on Google or anything, which meant that nobody would find her accidentally. She would probably be fine as long as she didn't panic or anything. She just had to play it cool.

 **Perfect_Fit:** Yeah, I've got plenty of free time right now. What did you have in mind?

"Free time" was sort of a nebulous concept. Taylor's mind kept darting back to the papers she had shoved into her backpack, and it was kind of hard to drag it back.

It took Taylor far too many seconds to realize the problem with that. She was spending more effort ignoring her work than it would take to do the work in the first place.

On the other hand, she really wanted to do this orientation exercise thing. Was there a way to do both? The homework was probably easy, just math and physics that she knew how to do. She could just crunch the numbers while TheWingedOne typed and do both. That would work.

Taylor lumbered out of her room and cleared off her desk. She had owned the desk for years, but rarely used it to do actual work - it had become more of a storage space. Still, having access to a big flat space would make this whole multitasking thing a lot easier. Digging through her backpack, she retrieved the slightly crumpled sheets of paper that Emma had retrieved for her, along with the front half of a pencil, dull but useable. She didn't have the end with the eraser, though, so she would have to be careful not to make any mistakes.

 **TheWingedOne:** Here's the basic plan: I'm going to help you play out a day at Winslow. You're not interacting with the story-at-large yet, but it should help you to get a better understanding of the way your character interacts with other people, which will help you down the line, and it should be a good way to flesh out your backstory a little more.

Taylor glanced up at the message, then turned her head back to the left, where she had straightened out a kinematics worksheet. She had written her name at the top - that was step one. Step two was to figure out how the fuck friction works.

 **TheWingedOne:** So, you're being bullied by a girl named Emma, like you said in your first description. She's probably quite popular - do you think that she has any accomplices?

 **Perfect_Fit:** Um.

 **Perfect_Fit:** Yeah, that seems right. Probably, like, two?

 **Perfect_Fit:** Two girls in her inner circle - there are a bunch of orbitters, but they're not as involved. Like a Mean Girls-type setup.

Taylor had first watched Mean Girls with Emma. They were very young, and Taylor had thought that Emma looked like Lindsay Lohan. That was probably still true. Taylor hadn't really kept up with Lindsay Lohan's career.

 **TheWingedOne:** Yes, that works. I'll describe them to you, and you can tell me whether or not they make sense to you.

 **TheWingedOne:** First, there's Madison. She's not a supermodel, more of a small-and-cute type. She's really conniving - you're not sure how she and Emma became friends, but you get the feeling that it only happened because Madison knew that Emma could make her popular. She's not as vicious as the other two; she still goes along with everything, but you get the sense that her ideas are more juvenile and prankish.

 **TheWingedOne:** Then there's Sophia. She's a track star, tall and gorgeous, really long legs, all that shit. She's kind of like the opposite of Madison - even more than Emma, maybe, she's fixated on crushing you.

 **TheWingedOne:** Oh, and she's black. Winslow isn't an E88 hive, so that's not super important, but it's worth knowing.

 **Perfect_Fit:** That makes sense, sure.

 **TheWingedOne:** Let's take a few moments to flesh these characters out. Is there anything else about them that you think is important?

 **Perfect_Fit:** I think that it's Sophia's fault.

 **Perfect_Fit:** Madison isn't that close with Emma, so I think that Sophia probably turned her against me. They met while I was at camp or something, and that's when we stopped being so close. Sophia really hated me for some reason, I think. Maybe Emma kind of hated me already, but Sophia definitely encouraged her to focus on that part of herself.

 **TheWingedOne:** Interesting. I can definitely work with that. Shall we move on to the exercise?

 **Perfect_Fit:** Yeah, sure.

 **(¯ˆ·.¸(¯ˆ·.¸(¯ˆ·.¸¸.·ˆ¯)¸.·ˆ¯)¸.·ˆ¯)**

The kinematics worksheet lay unfinished on the desk. Taylor had done about half of it before losing interest - she could only study so many spring systems before she lost it.

Well, "so many" wasn't the right phrase. She had only finished a couple of problems before setting her pencil aside, not to pick it up for the rest of the night. Instead, her attention was on the laptop screen, her breathing just heavier than usual as she waited for a response.

 **TheWingedOne:** We're in the home stretch now. You're on the bus after school; you'll be home soon, but for the next fifteen minutes you've got nothing to do but think. What do you do? What do your thoughts look like?

 **Perfect_Fit:** I can't stop dwelling on it, I guess.

 **TheWingedOne:** Care to elaborate?

 **Perfect_Fit:** Emma and I were really close. We did everything together. She was like my sister. When she turned on me it hurt more than it should have, because I _trusted her_ , you know? It's like I gave her a piece of my soul and she just ran off with it.

 **Perfect_Fit:** I try to distract myself from it. What's the condition of my backpack?

 **TheWingedOne:** You're worried that it might be unrecoverable - it's covered in juice stains, and you have a bad feeling that you won't be able to work them all out. Was there anything important inside?

 **Perfect_Fit:** Um, yeah, probably. Like a notebook?

 **TheWingedOne:** What kind of notebook?

 **Perfect_Fit:** The one I was using to test my powers, I think. I made a bunch of measurements, how far my range is and stuff like that, and wrote it down in code so that I could develop strategies for later on. The ink is probably washing out, and I don't know if I'm willing to do it over - I've probably lost a lot of information that I'll never get back.

 **TheWingedOne:** How does that make you feel?

 **Perfect_Fit:** Frustrated, obviously, but resentful too. I kind of want to kill them.

 **TheWingedOne:** Oh?

 **Perfect_Fit:** I would never do it, not really, but I wish that I could. It's like, they don't really deserve to live, but that mistake's already been made.

 **TheWingedOne:** So would you say that you're you're planning to hurt them, or is it more of a vague concept?

 **Perfect_Fit:** Definitely not planning anything. It was easier before I had powers. Back then I was allowed to fantasize about, like, pulling a knife and telling them to back off, and they wouldn't, and I would get revenge or something. I don't think I would have done it then, either, but it was easier to think about, because I knew that they could stop me.

 **Perfect_Fit:** But now I could _always_ do it. There's not a delineation anymore - it's not like I can say that I won't bring a knife to school and that will keep me from doing anything stupid. I can _always_ kill them, there are always enough bugs. I can't even totally control it sometimes. So I can't let myself think like that.

 **Perfect_Fit:** I want to hurt them, but the only person I'm really allowed to hurt is myself, and I'm not that badly off.

 **TheWingedOne:** There is a way for capes to let off violent energy, you know.

 **Perfect_Fit:** Yeah, heroing, sure. I'm definitely planning to use my powers to fight bad guys. I mean, not the really bad bad guys, but I can probably spook plenty of street thugs, at least. The problem is that that's dangerous. If I go after gang members, then their bosses might come after me, and that's dangerous. I don't think I'm strong enough to fight, like, Kaiser or Lung.

 **TheWingedOne:** That makes sense. Is there anything else that's stopping you, or is it just the risk that you'd take?

 **Perfect_Fit:** I don't think so?

 **Perfect_Fit:** I mean it's not like I'm just scared of getting hurt. I know that I'll get hurt. It's more that if I get hurt, everyone around me feels it too. Dad would worry if he knew. I can deal with suffering, but I don't want to inflict my suffering on others.

 **TheWingedOne:** I understand. So, do you have a schedule? Is there a specific date you're aiming for? Or is it just an eventual thing?

 **Perfect_Fit:** I don't have any sort of set schedule, no.

 **Perfect_Fit:** But it has to be soon.

 **Perfect_Fit:** No, fuck that. It has to be now. This weekend, for sure. If I keep waiting I'll never do it.

 **TheWingedOne:** Are you sure you're ready for that?

 **Perfect_Fit:** I'm sure I'm not. I don't have a finished costume, for one thing.

 **Perfect_Fit:** But I'll never be totally ready.

 **(¯ˆ·.¸(¯ˆ·.¸(¯ˆ·.¸¸.·ˆ¯)¸.·ˆ¯)¸.·ˆ¯)**

It was utterly baffling. She knew that she hadn't _done_ anything. She hadn't even finished her physics worksheet, losing herself to the game and abandoning her responsibilities. She had set out to do a real-life task and she has failed - there was no question about that.

A part of her was worrying, as it always was. Worried that this would push her grade beyond the possibility of salvage. Worried that she would never work up enough motivation to finish anything, not ever again. Worried that she had messed up by playing in the first place. That she should have never got caught up in this game, that it was another sink for time that she couldn't afford to waste. That part of her wasn't wrong, not by any stretch. Those were perfectly rational things to worry about.

But Taylor, as much as she wished otherwise, was an emotional being. The ruling bit of her psyche didn't care about those rational fears.

Well, it wasn't that it didn't care, exactly. It was more like it didn't take them seriously? The ruling bit didn't acknowledge logic as a valid domain, or reason as an effective tool. Her conclusions were valid within the framework of the provided construct, but she couldn't bring herself to believe, to really believe, that the construct was valid in the first place.

What mattered was that she felt fine. Good, even. Proud, as if she had accomplished something meaningful.

She had stood up to her demons. She had resolved to _act_ , and she had really meant it. She was going to go out and fight villains over the weekend, bring justice to the lawless and all that. She wasn't going to lie down and suffer anymore - she would fight for herself.

The rational part of her knew that it wasn't real, that she was going to spend several hours talking to a stranger over the internet about made-up superheroes, which wasn't something to be proud of. It was another distraction or time-sink or obsession or whatever else you wanted to call it. She was just as lazy and unmotivated as before. She hadn't finished her physics homework. It was due Friday and it was easy and it was right there and it was mostly blank and it would stay that way.

In the back of her head, her rational mind screamed and kicked, and went totally ignored.

 **(¯ˆ·.¸(¯ˆ·.¸(¯ˆ·.¸¸.·ˆ¯)¸.·ˆ¯)¸.·ˆ¯)**

Taylor wasn't at school on Thursday.

Her body was there. The husk of skin and meat called "Taylor" shambled around and wrote things down and pretended to be whole, sould and sinew. It smiled occasionally, and ate Taylor's lunch, kept itself out of tricky situations, running on autopilot all the while, a weekday at Bernie's.

Taylor wasn't there, though. Taylor wasn't sure that she was _anywhere,_ really.

Anybody could have figured it out, if they had really tried. It's not that hard to spot a zombie. The secret is that zombies can't talk: if you try to have a conversation with a zombie, they'll mostly grunt. They'll say "yes" and "no" when absolutely necessary, and "sure" to show that they're following your narrative, and they'll encourage you to keep talking, because as long as you keep talking, you'll stay focused on yourself.

But zombies can't talk. They can't express ideas, they can't really disagree with anything. They just sit and listen.

So anybody could have realized that Taylor was missing. Nobody did.

Taylor didn't come back until later that night. The cadaver kept things cool with Mom, ate dinner and gave false commentary on its day, and stole away downstairs - Taylor came back about half an hour after that, slipping into her own mind through the back door while nobody was watching.

Everything hit her at once. She hadn't meant to leave - she had gone to school the same way she did every other day, and she just stepped out of her body for a bit of fresh air on the bus, and she had lost track of time and missed her curfew. She didn't like the of non-presence, of non-humanity, of not being. She wanted to be alive every minute, even when it hurt, or when it was dull.

Well, she wanted that _now_. Now, she was looking back, filtering through her corpse's memories, seeing all the moments she had missed and realizing that she couldn't relive them, she could never relive them, because she hadn't lived them in the first place. They weren't memories, they were photographs of a place she'd never been, postcards from the Eiffel Tower.

In the moment of her return, Taylor wished that she could go back. But in the dull moments, in the time between her home and school, when nothing was happening, it was so easy to forget, or to allow herself just a moment.

Taylor fell down onto the carpet. She was crying, she realized. Cool, saline tears tiptoed down the bridge of her nose. Her breath came short, sharp, cold and harsh against the back of her mouth, threatening to dry her lips or halt entirely. Her arms tingled, a symptom either of hypoxia or just living. She tried to lift them. She couldn't lift them. They were pinned to the ground, not heavy, not immobile, but no longer connected to the rest of her body. Her senses stopped at her shoulder, and when she tried to move her arm, she found that the nerves were gone, the muscle gone, somehow detached.

She should have been terrified, but terror was too much effort. She surrendered, sobbing, damping the carpet floor. She felt the carpet scratch against her cheek, the slight motion of her head creating friction. A minute passed, maybe, or maybe more than that, maybe much more, before Taylor's breath slowed and she slowly reclaimed her arms. It was another minute before she dared try - she felt the tingling in her arms sharpen into pain, and waited for that pain to dampen, before she tentatively tried to lift her arm. It came up an inch before Taylor dropped it, the effort unsustainable.

Her body was heavy, but it was _there_.

Taylor sighed, relieved.

 **(¯ˆ·.¸(¯ˆ·.¸(¯ˆ·.¸¸.·ˆ¯)¸.·ˆ¯)¸.·ˆ¯)**

It was still dark when Taylor woke up. She could see the dim outlines of her basement, the couch slid up against the wall and the pile of crap in the corner. Through the window, moonlight illumined the sallow-green lawn, unkempt but self-sustaining, its appearance bleached grey by the pale lighting.

She yawned, and felt the carpet scratch against her cheek.

Her face was dry. No. Taylor touched under her eye with a finger and rubbed, pulling some dry substance off and restoring the supple subtending skin.

Tears. They were dried tears.

The previous night shoved itself into her consciousness, demanding an immediate explanation. She had arisen from her reverie, she had broken, she had cried, she had lain there, paralyzed, and then . . .

And then it had all gone away, and she had just stayed there. No longer paralyzed, she had just let herself stay, every object of her mind floating off.

She must have fallen asleep like that.

Taylor pulled her phone out of her pocket - she was lucky not to have rolled over and ruined it in her sleep. She clicked the power button, and the screen lit up, far too bright to read. After a few seconds, Taylor's eyes adjusted to the light and the phone's screen came into focus. 2:38 A.M.

That was probably a good ten hours of sleep, then, all in all. Taylor had read somewhere that the consistency of a sleep schedule was more important than the gross volume of sleep, but . . . _ten freaking hours_. That had to be enough to offset any inefficiencies in her sleep schedule.

Her stomach growled, which made sense, considering that she had missed a meal. Whatever. She could eat breakfast in a few hours - that would put her back on track.

In the meantime, she couldn't go upstairs lest she wake her mother, and she wouldn't be able to go back to sleep. And the contrast of her phone's screen with the surrounding darkness was too strong - even a quick glance had hurt her eyes. That left one option, really.

Taylor stood unsteadily, shambled to her backpack, and pulled back the zipper, allowing her to pull out a mess of papers with her left hand. She started shuffling through them, throwing aside old assignments and other useless papers, until she found her physics worksheet. She pressed herself up against the wall, groping her way along it until she felt a light switch under her hand - she flashed the light, just long enough to make a route to her desk, and stumbled her way to her seat.

This would be the trickiest maneuver - she had to turn on her overhead lamp without hurting her eyes. She squeezed her eyelids tight, so only the vaguest impressions of light could come through, then found the lamp's switch and flicked it - some more fiddling led her to the brightness dial, which she turned until the lamp was as dim as it would go. Then, slowly, she relaxed her eyelids, allowing them to crack open a millimeter or two, just to make sure that it was still dark enough. Thankfully, she had found an appropriate brightness rather quickly.

Of course, she had forgotten to grab a pencil, so she had to make her way blindly back to her backpack to find one. It only took a little time, though, and she had plenty of time.

 **(¯ˆ·.¸(¯ˆ·.¸(¯ˆ·.¸¸.·ˆ¯)¸.·ˆ¯)¸.·ˆ¯)**

Several hours later, sunlight began to make its way into the basement. The sun had probably been up for a couple of minutes already, but at its shallowest angle, no light made its way to Taylor's desk - all in all, it was six forty-five before Taylor noticed a change.

She had finished her physics worksheet pretty quickly - it hadn't been that hard, making her wonder why she hadn't just done it earlier in the week and saved herself the worry. From there, she had moved on to Calculus homework - her teacher had a 50% policy, which meant that she could turn in any homework that she'd missed for 50% credit at any time in the year, which was great. She was all caught up and then some - she'd completed the homework for the next two weeks, which would give her a nice little buffer if her motivation dropped again. She had meant to use that extra time to do some history readings instead, but those were a little harder to get through, and she was scared that the textbook might put her to sleep, at which point she wouldn't wake up in time for school. That didn't matter, though - she could just do them later that night.

Taylor made her way up the stairs - now that the sun was up, it was reasonable for her to be awake, even if this was early by her standards. She wondered, for a moment, what Mom would think if she woke up now - Taylor hadn't woken up early in weeks, maybe months. It didn't happen, though; Taylor ate her cereal in silence.

Everything had been going wrong - her schoolwork, her personal life, her self-maintenance. And then, in a sudden storm, her problems had gone to war with each other, and fought until none remained. It was no less than divine intervention.

Taylor closed her eyes for a moment - in the black of her mind, she saw a radiant white figure draped in an ethereal multicolored raiment. A woman, floating high above everything that was or could be. She unfurled her silvery wings and glided, serene, undisturbed.

An angel.

 **(¯ˆ·.¸(¯ˆ·.¸(¯ˆ·.¸¸.·ˆ¯)¸.·ˆ¯)¸.·ˆ¯)**

 **A/N: I keep thinking that I can commit to a consistent update schedule and I keep being wrong. Next chapter when I get around to it. As always, criticism is appreciated.**


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